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I'm more concerned whether or not the "sacrifice" will actually make any real difference. Banning "evil black rifles" and high-capacity magazines will not stop this. Real change has to come--real change to public healthcare, to education, to the entire paradigm of gun control laws. The existing laws are worthless. We don't need more "feel-good" laws that clearly demonstrate the lawmakers behind them don't know shit about firearms.

Even with all of this, even if we can stand to look in the mirror long enough to pick out all the cracks and flaws so we can fix them, a lock only keeps out an honest man. If someone wants to kill bad enough, they will not stop even if they have to bash out their victims' brains with a rock.

Even without any access to a gun, it's easy enough to make dangerous explosive devices with things that aren't even regulated or tracked at all. Anyone who's ever taken a chemistry class would know how to do it.

You are making a common argument. That only criminals would have guns in a restricted society.

But reality is, in a country where gun ownership is restricted, the value of a gun increases to the point that it goes above the pricepoint of the common criminal. Yes, guns can be smuggled, but only for those with the means, the people who are organised and wealthy. Those who commit crimes for pocket change, or went mad and want to kill for the sake of it, do not try to locate a gun; they simply use knives.
In the countries where guns are restricted, you are not going to face burglars or street thugs armed with firearms; you are going to have to have pissed off the Mob for that.

And no, criminals can't just steal a gun. You can't steal what people don't own.

So it boils down to this; Americans feel threatened enough to own guns because of rampant gun ownership, and rampant gun ownership is what threatened them enough to make them arm themselves. And in a merry go-around we loop.

However, as with all statistics on this issue, it doesn't give us a good picture of what is actually out there because we don't have enough data since many gun owners stopped admitting to owning guns after 1968.

Gun owners stopped admitting to guns after 1968: do you have proof of that statement?

I've seen (and cited in some posts here) that page before. There's something interesting about it. Scroll down to the part where they show firearm ownership by region. For those who can't or are too lazy too, the results show that the South has the highest rate of gun ownership, followed next by the Midwest, then the West, and in last place is the Northeast. The Midwest percentage varied over the years between being very close to the level of the South and being very close to the level of the Midwest. This data covers years 2003 to 2012.

Now take a look at this website: Assault deaths within the United States. The first graph is interesting and you can see some trends for yourself, but skip down to the second graph, which sort of summarizes the first. From what I can tell, these are tracking deaths due to assault, not deaths by firearms. The weapon (if any) used in the assault in unspecified.

For those who can't view the website, here's what it shows: in covering the years 2000 to 2010, the South consistently had the highest rate at roughly 7.5 assault-related deaths per 100,000 people (trending down to 7/100,000 in 2010), the West was below, then above, and then below the rates in the Midwest (and aside from a peak around 2005, both have been pretty close), and the Northeast has consistently been the lowest with a rate of just below 4.5 per 100,000.

This matches up surprisingly nicely with the Gallup poll data. Two arguments could be made from the data:
1) Guns increase the death rates in assaults (there is a positive correlation between gun ownership and deaths by assaults);
2) Guns do not offer any protection from assaults (otherwise you would find a negative correlation).

However, there are many variables at play here. Even though the trends seem to correlate between self-reported gun ownership and deaths by assault, there's also a trend with poverty and education. Based on articles we went over a few months ago, the socioeconomics are what causes the violence. The guns may simply make it easier for violent confrontations to lead to deaths.

The stronger point is that the guns don't seem to be preventing deaths, which puts a ding in the notion that guns are protective.

As to your statement that statistics are flawed and we have to be careful with them, I fully agree. We'll never be able to say with absolute certainty that this is exactly how things are playing out based on statistics. The data collection is imperfect, and because this is an issue with many variables, we can never get enough data. Unless data was outright fabricated it still represents something useful, though.

As before, I'd be interested to hear your take on the data.

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Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

I find it interesting that those who want to defend themselves from the military, do NOT support de-funding the military.

You raise a very interesting point.

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Originally Posted by synaesthetic

Even without any access to a gun, it's easy enough to make dangerous explosive devices with things that aren't even regulated or tracked at all. Anyone who's ever taken a chemistry class would know how to do it.

I hear this line fairly often. Call me an idiot biologist if you want, but I've taken multiple chemistry classes and I have no idea how to create an explosive device that would harm anyone, let alone kill them. I would not be surprised if the information is on the internet and the materials can be procured, but I strongly suspect that this isn't as easy as people make it out to be.

I hear this line fairly often. Call me an idiot biologist if you want, but I've taken multiple chemistry classes and I have no idea how to create an explosive device that would harm anyone, let alone kill them. I would not be surprised if the information is on the internet and the materials can be procured, but I strongly suspect that this isn't as easy as people make it out to be.

Pretty sure common, everyday flour is explosive if you pack it tightly. So definitely isn't hard to get the materials.

Two arguments could be made from the data:
1) Guns increase the death rates in assaults (there is a positive correlation between gun ownership and deaths by assaults);
2) Guns do not offer any protection from assaults (otherwise you would find a negative correlation).

I think you would need to see how many of the assaults were actually committed with firearm, and how many of the deaths involved victims who were armed before you can draw those conclusions, not to mention that due to the way crime statistics are calculated, assault attempts that were prevented/stopped wouldn't have made it into that list anyway. The data is just too broad and ambiguous there.

Edit:

Man, just watched some of the clips from Pierce Morgan's "debate", which made the most heated of the arguments on this forum looks like jovial afternoon picnics

If all he wanted to do was shout over everyone who disagreed with him, why bother?

I hear this line fairly often. Call me an idiot biologist if you want, but I've taken multiple chemistry classes and I have no idea how to create an explosive device that would harm anyone, let alone kill them. I would not be surprised if the information is on the internet and the materials can be procured, but I strongly suspect that this isn't as easy as people make it out to be.

It's actually really easy. The problem is getting sufficient quantities of ingredients without raising suspicion and then being capable of transporting them without incident....which just isn't going to happen these days without some incredible planning or slacking authorities.

It's actually really easy. The problem is getting sufficient quantities of ingredients without raising suspicion and then being capable of transporting them without incident....which just isn't going to happen these days without some incredible planning or slacking authorities.

It really depends on the ingredient and the type of explosive, stuff that can be bought at department store would be rather easy to acquire without suspicion, one just have to spread out the purchase over different store and time. As for transportation, again it depends on the type of explosive and the intended target, sometimes all you need is a car - an VBIED can be extremely effective.

Then you're not reading my posts or looking at the data I mention. I'm open to other interpretations of the data, and I am always open to new data. Anecdotal stories are nice, but don't carry much worth.

The same could be said for nuclear power. Do you support giving nuclear capabilities to every country? It doesn't magically become a nuclear weapon, nor do nuclear weapons magically launch themselves.

(For what it's worth, I wish we'd lighten up on our nuclear restrictions - but the reasoning doesn't carry over to guns.)

A gun has perfectly legitimate uses that don't harm anyone; they can also be used to save people. Question: is one life saved by a gun a worthwhile tradeoff if ten lives were taken by a gun? This is what the issue becomes. Are more lives being saved by guns, or would more lives be saved by limiting or removing guns? The data isn't entirely clear. If it were, there wouldn't be an argument to be had.

Everyone is biased in their own ways, but the opinions are not as black and white as you're making them out to be. I would caution against trying to make this a black and white type of issue, with black and white opinions.

This. I personally am not a fan of guns, but I recognize that they have important uses. But just as useful as it is for defense, it's can be as lethal for a killer. I can understand the frustration that people have regarding the whole "ban guns" mentality; it's a bit narrow-minded. But it's also frustrating to go the other direction and just arm more people. Maybe it's a pragmatically useful method, but as Ledgem said, is it worth it? Perhaps the line between civilian with training, and trained professional is getting blurry but what about judgment? For me, it's also something of a moral issue.

Bit of a tangent: I'm honestly grateful that many of us can live in a society where owning a firearm is a choice, not a strict obligation. Certainly, raising awareness about firearms should be encouraged, if not owning one.

It really depends on the ingredient and the type of explosive, stuff that can be bought at department store would be rather easy to acquire without suspicion, one just have to spread out the purchase over different store and time. As for transportation, again it depends on the type of explosive and the intended target, sometimes all you need is a car - an VBIED can be extremely effective.

True, for example nitro is unstable and I wouldn't recommend transporting it unprofessionally. But really, the point is that while it's not hard to use chemicals to poison/bomb people, the logistics beyond creation are tough to pull off. Some of this stuff is so unstable that outside interference (bumps) or slightly incorrect mixtures could be disastrous.

There's a lot of ways to do mass killing, but the gun is the quickest, simplest, and most efficient route to do that.

I think you would need to see how many of the assaults were actually committed with firearm, and how many of the deaths involved victims who were armed before you can draw those conclusions, not to mention that due to the way crime statistics are calculated, assault attempts that were prevented/stopped wouldn't have made it into that list anyway. The data is just too broad and ambiguous there.

Excellent! These are excellent points. Because I was curious about the issue that you raise, I looked into the CDC's database myself in order to try and determine how representative the deaths by assault are of gun violence.

Some notes on my methodology: I downloaded all causes of death from 1999 through 2010 (all date ranges in the database), sorted by region (Northeast, Midwest, South, West). Because I'm not trying to make a pretty graph I did not sort the data by year, and thus the following numbers represent the totals from that 10-11 year span. If anyone else wants to play with the data but can't figure out how to use the CDC database, let me know and I'll upload my file for you.

Results (all numbers are per 100,000, and while I provide the raw numbers, I am ranking each region from highest to lowest per category):

Assault by unspecified means (which doesn't tell us much for guns specifically, but the numbers may still be useful to see)
South: 9,001
West: 4,356
Midwest: 3,795
Northeast: 2,706

There are a number of other categories dealing with assault, including sequelae of assault, assault by smoke/fire/flames, assault by bodily force, assault by drowning/submersion, assault by motor vehicle, and so on. I am not going to include those here because as interesting as they are, they all number in the hundreds and aren't as significant (and I don't want to spend all day typing this stuff out).

All right, let's summarize. We already knew that the South was consistently experiencing the most assault-related deaths, and the Northeast was experiencing the least. The purpose of this exercise was to try and get a sense of how much firearms were contributing to those deaths. According to these numbers, in the South there were five times as many deaths owed to unclassified firearm discharge as there were deaths owed to assaults with "sharp objects." This number climbs to six times as many deaths if you add the firearm classifications to that number.

All together, it makes for a pretty convincing argument that the more firearms you have in a particular region, the more they're going to be used. Seems logical.

What the data does not tell us (which kyp275 correctly pointed out) is whether the people who were assaulted had firearms on them, as well. The assumption I would make is that the deaths include a mix of cases where people were armed and unarmed, and that, by virtue of higher gun ownership, the South would have a higher proportion of armed people who were killed. However, at this point there's no data proof of that idea.

Right. I'm not afraid of losing my guns--I don't even own any right now, due to financial circumstances. I'm more afraid of people being mollified by legislation that does nothing to solve the problem, a snake-oil panacea that doesn't do a thing and lets everyone drop their guard.

That's always my concern in these types of situations. It's a bit like what you would see in some fictional, action-type story or something, where there might be all these complex, deeply embedded issues and elements at work in the background...and then everything is magically solved by the hero defeating the bad guy.

Or even like similar, real life issues. For example, the whole "oh, we passed the Civil Rights Act, everything's fine and dandy now! No more racism here!" It's a bit like those, though not exactly the same, since of course these steps did actually help; the similarity I meant comes more from people thinking the steps solved everything completely, that there's no more reason to think these problems exist.

The data doesn't specify if death by assault means that the victims or the perpetrators died in the assault. It could very well mean that southerners tend to fight back more and as a result either the victim or perpetrator dies more often than in other regions.

Gun owners stopped admitting to guns after 1968: do you have proof of that statement?

That is quite complicated (since they're not reporting it) so I'll direct you to this study/article which makes an attempt at showing how we know (or strongly suspect) the reporting was greatly reduced after the GCA of 1968.
The reason why I use 1968 as the cut off is because that was when BATF kept a copy of the 4473 after every purchase (before that the form was only for tax purposes, GCA 1938) a movement started in the gun community to not report said purchases to the census bureau. In addition, private sales of pre-68 guns are completely off the books, so there is no data on anyone who buys guns outside of the system legally. As a gunsmtih I came across many pre-68 weapons that I repaired for people "off the books."

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I've seen (and cited in some posts here) that page before. There's something interesting about it. Scroll down to the part where they show firearm ownership by region. For those who can't or are too lazy too, the results show that the South has the highest rate of gun ownership, followed next by the Midwest, then the West, and in last place is the Northeast. The Midwest percentage varied over the years between being very close to the level of the South and being very close to the level of the Midwest. This data covers years 2003 to 2012.

Now take a look at this website: Assault deaths within the United States. The first graph is interesting and you can see some trends for yourself, but skip down to the second graph, which sort of summarizes the first. From what I can tell, these are tracking deaths due to assault, not deaths by firearms. The weapon (if any) used in the assault in unspecified.

For those who can't view the website, here's what it shows: in covering the years 2000 to 2010, the South consistently had the highest rate at roughly 7.5 assault-related deaths per 100,000 people (trending down to 7/100,000 in 2010), the West was below, then above, and then below the rates in the Midwest (and aside from a peak around 2005, both have been pretty close), and the Northeast has consistently been the lowest with a rate of just below 4.5 per 100,000.

This matches up surprisingly nicely with the Gallup poll data. Two arguments could be made from the data:
1) Guns increase the death rates in assaults (there is a positive correlation between gun ownership and deaths by assaults);
2) Guns do not offer any protection from assaults (otherwise you would find a negative correlation).

Actually all it does is show that assaults with firearms are most likely in the main drug-dealing corridors of the US.

Source DEA:

Also, the Gallup study doesn't indicate whether the weapons used were legally or illegally possessed.
The data also fails to take into account the number of reported use of a firearm for self-defense, because hard data on that requires more than just a Gallup phone call survey.
It requires considerable cross referencing of multiple streams of data, which Gallup didn't do in that article.
Therefore, your 2nd statement is grossly inaccurate, and is not new by any measure.

During the late 1990s, at the height of homicide in the US in the last 30 years, multiple studies were done and none were able to come to a consensus.
Here is an excellent site that analyzed much of that data.http://www.gunsandcrime.org/index.html

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However, there are many variables at play here. Even though the trends seem to correlate between self-reported gun ownership and deaths by assault, there's also a trend with poverty and education. Based on articles we went over a few months ago, the socioeconomics are what causes the violence. The guns may simply make it easier for violent confrontations to lead to deaths.

This argument started back in the 1970s.
It's a circular argument in that it assumes that survey data can determine the effectiveness of firearms in self defense.
If your position is that they are useless in self defense, then why do the police have them?

Overall the fallacy of "more guns, more crime" has been weighed, measured, and found wanting by John Lott, and Gary Kleck who did an extensive study of it.

The factors you've listed are only partially indicative of what contributes to violent crime, though it does not translate into violent crime with a firearm.
Poverty in and of itself, makes acquiring a firearm legally very unlikely due to the high cost of such weapons, and ammuntion, and magazines (if it is such a weapon).
Illegal acquisition, through theft, may allow for a poor person to acquire a weapon, but not the ammunition.
Firearms and ammunition are NOT cheap.
Education level is meaningless. People with little education are no more or less likely to purchase a weapon for self-defense.
I agree that there are other factors, but all the data indicates that that the reasons for violent crime are usually gang, drug, or personal (emotionally charged) in nature.
Two of those can be reduced, gang and drug, the third is just something we have to live with.

The stronger point is that the guns don't seem to be preventing deaths, which puts a ding in the notion that guns are protective.

Don't seem to be?
The only "ding" I see here is in the "dingy" poisoning of the well you're attempting to use here.

Jeanne Assam would disagree, as would the police officer at the Mayan 14 theater in San Antonio, and as would any other person who has used a weapon to defend themselves effectively.

Criminolgists Dr. Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz (used to believe what you are putting forward. Kleck was an ardent supported of gun control prior to the late 1990s when he immersed himself into the issue and began studying it.
His conclusions shocked himself and changed his position on this issue.Here is one of the studies he did, with Marc Gertz.

The final, and most relevent, portion of their conclusion (since it is lengthy) was this:

The policy implications of these results are straightforward. These findings do not imply anything about whether moderate regulatory measures such as background checks or purchase permits would be desirable. Regulatory measures which do not disarm large shares of the general population would not significantly reduce beneficial defensive uses of firearms by noncriminals. On the other hand, prohibitionist measures, whether aimed at all guns or just at handguns, are aimed at disarming criminals and noncriminals alike. They would therefore discourage and presumably decrease the frequency of DGU (defensive gun use) among noncriminal crime victims because even minimally effective gun bans would disarm at least some noncriminals. The same would be true of laws which ban gun carrying. In sum, measures that effectively reduce gun availability among the noncriminal majority also would reduce DGUs that otherwise would have saved lives, prevented injuries, thwarted rape attempts, driven off burglars, and helped victims retain their property.

Since as many as 400,000 people a year use guns in situations where the defenders claim that they "almost certainly" saved a life by doing so, this result cannot be dismissed as trivial. If even one-tenth of these people are accurate in their stated perceptions, the number of lives saved by victim use of guns would still exceed the total number of lives taken with guns. It is not possible to know how many lives are actually saved this way, for the simple reason that no one can be certain how crime incidents would have turned out had the participants acted differently than they actually did. But surely this is too serious a matter to simply assume that practically everyone who says he believes he saved a life by using a gun was wrong.

This is also too serious a matter to base conclusions on silly statistics comparing the number of lives taken with guns with the number of criminals killed by victims.[100] Killing a criminal is not a benefit to the victim, but rather a nightmare to be suffered for years afterward. Saving a life through DGU would be a benefit, but this almost never involves killing the criminal; probably fewer than 3,000 criminals are lawfully killed by gun-wielding victims each year,[101] representing only about 1/1000 of the number of DGUs, and less than 1% of the number of purportedly life-saving DGUs. Therefore, the number of justifiable homicides cannot serve as even a rough index of life-saving gun uses. Since this comparison does not involve any measured benefit, it can shed no light on the benefits and costs of keeping guns in the home for protection.[102]

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As to your statement that statistics are flawed and we have to be careful with them, I fully agree. We'll never be able to say with absolute certainty that this is exactly how things are playing out based on statistics. The data collection is imperfect, and because this is an issue with many variables, we can never get enough data. Unless data was outright fabricated it still represents something useful, though.

It is, on both sides of the isle.
The NRA says that millions of guns are used for self defense each year.
I don't believe that, maybe I'm wrong.
Do they act as a deterrent, I think so yes, but actully being brandished to stop a crime? No. Most guns are used for other reasons, like training, target shooting, plinking, competitive sport, hunting, recreation, etc.
However, Gleck's findings are probably the most accurate.
Hundreds of thousands of guns are used in self-defense effectively every year.
Of those, thousands result in what the crime statistics will label a "homicide."

I do not put any faith in the surveys done by Harvard, or Princeton, and don't believe a whit of anything out of the Brady Campaign.
Therefore we are left with determining with what is the most credible argument to ourselves.
I find Gleck's arguments to be among the most compelling, then Lotts (though he does go too far overall IMHO), then others.

The data doesn't specify if death by assault means that the victims or the perpetrators died in the assault. It could very well mean that southerners tend to fight back more and as a result either the victim or perpetrator dies more often than in other regions.

There are separate numbers for discharge from firearms (unspecified and with the classifications that I listed), suicide by firearms, as well as discharge of firearms by "legal intervention" (presumably, police). Those are all distinct from the categories that I listed. While we would need to dig to uncover what they define "assault" as, the different categories provide some clarity.

That was a good thought that you had, though.

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Originally Posted by GundamFan0083

Actually all it does is show that assaults with firearms are most likely in the main drug-dealing corridors of the US.

We can further analyze the data by looking at the numbers by state instead of by region, but based on that map there are corridors all over the place and only one or two states might not be touched by one of those corridor colors. If anything, based off of that map I would expect the West to have the least assault-with-gun-related deaths.

Which isn't to say that drug-related gun violence is not a contributing factor, but how much is it contributing? Based purely on the trends and the numbers of corridors crossing over each region, I don't think it's contributing much. But again, looking at the numbers of assault-related deaths by state, and examining it alongside information about drug usage (or other information related to drugs) would help to clarify which direction that one goes in.

I'll have to respond to your other points later - I've run out of time to look at everything you linked to, but I'm interested to read through.

Its a "cold war" problem. You don't wander around with a bat when everyone who is likely to be a threat is using a gun. I also keep an emergency stash of food, etc for earthquakes. Does that mean I'm *prepared* for earthquake or that I *fear* an earthquake?

I'll make use of whatever weapons are available in a given situation but saying I'm "afraid" because a shotgun is an excellent tool for home defense purposes simply tells me someone doesn't want to actually discuss the topic, they simply want to label me so they feel better.

May I point out someone isn't discussing the topic by even acknowledging his fear, or would you prefer the term "insecurity?" How many earthquake do you have in your region? I'm guessing you don't live in one of those earthquake prone region like California, cause if you did you would have been desensitized beyond the point of food-stashing? I got family members there who don't even bother waking up from sleep anything below 5 richter scale. When I had my first earthquake experience ever several months ago, a mere 3.8 jolt in richter scale, I was puzzled at first at the shaking before realizing... holy crap that's a earthquake.... as I proceeded to run out of the house. The next day I inquired about if I was covered under earthquake by my home insurance, only to find out they have got me covered for volcano.

You are prepared because you fear something directly or the indirect causation of it. You can redress the issue in any way you want, it doesn't take away from the assertion that we Americans fear too many things. And guns are one way to cope with such fears. *Points to another dooms day date* If you are so sure about the proficiency of stopping/killing power of a machete, you wouldn't mention shotgun and home-defense in the same sentence. You would have rather stuck to the point of arguing in the line of sports and hunting when mentioning gun.

Next time, just quote me instead of speaking in third person if you are going to pick on any of my points. I don't bite..... tooo much. I'm never demeaning but I won't hesitate to lay out my own understanding. I personally couldn't care less if Americans have more guns than ever. I just want to know how we can make it very very difficult for potential mass killers from acquiring any kind of weapons that make killing so easy, such as guns. They are the ones that don't care what the method is as long as they can kill as many people as they can in a very quick succession. The thing is, they tend to be rather average looking and very hard to pick out as "threats" using "guns" until it's too late.

Nothing like a dosage of cynicism first thing in the morning.

__________________

Kudara nai na!Sig by TheEroKing.Calling on all Naruto fans, One Piece fans, and Shounen-fans in general... I got two words for you: One-Punch Man!Executive member of the ASS. Ready to flee at the first sign of trouble.

I live in Oregon, where we have volcanoes, earthquakes, and are awaiting a plate tectonic quake of 9+. *Everyone* is encouraged to have several weeks or more of supplies. I'm not even sure how to respond to someone who thinks "lots of earthquakes = desensitization and therefore not preparing".

I just think the equivalencing of wariness or preparedness with "fear" is just subtle name calling.

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I just want to know how we can make it very very difficult for potential mass killers from acquiring any kind of weapons that make killing so easy, such as guns. They are the ones that don't care what the method is as long as they can kill as many people as they can in a very quick succession. The thing is, they tend to be rather average looking and very hard to pick out as "threats" using "guns" until it's too late.

Same here. So its annoying when people I otherwise agree with start calling me names or stamping "witch" on my arm.

I mentioned machete (or swords) because many anti-gun folks are so unfamiliar with martial concepts they seem to think the babies are safe because they've gotten rid of ugly guns.

One thing I'll mention related to the "if no guns, they'll turn to bombs" argument is that chemical weaponry can be easy to make with the right amount of knowledge, and very cheap. Ricin, shown in one of my favorite shows on television, Breaking Bad, comes to mind. If someone managed to slip that into food being served to many people you could kill perhaps far more than a person on a gun rampage.

Though I suspect there might be some pyschological 'satisfaction,' for lack of a better word, for these mass-shooters in the act of bursting in and killing their victims themselves.